Cloud

Why Would I Want To Consider “Cloud”?

The transition to Cloud means your IT can become as responsive as the rest of your business demands. As an IT professional, you know that other parts of your business can buy IT services with a click and a credit card, even though you’re still responsible for protecting the company’s information. Keep your company’s information securely in your control while satisfying the business need for IT agility and responsiveness by building what they want to use.

As your cloud expert, you can rely on The Pinnacle Group to provide you with the latest information, trends, best practices, and challenges with your CLOUD buying process. Below are some of the latest assets that can help you learn more and prepare for your CLOUD strategy.

The Pinnacle Group Cloud Solutions

Cloud is becoming more and more confusing. Private versus Public versus Hybrid. Which is right for me? Let The Pinnacle Group help. Simply discuss your needs and vision and we&#39;ll design a solution that is right for you.

Creating an Interconnected Cloud Service

The benefits that Cloud Service Providers and their customers realize when working with the right data center provider are certain: A interconnected ecosystem means access to a broader customer base, as well as a broader choice of Network Service Providers and other CSPs to expand their cloud offerings. With the most connected data centers in the most locations around the world, Equinix has redefined the data center from space and power to a core component of a successful service delivery strategy. And Equinix has the most connections to put that strategy into practice. The world’s top networks, carriers and ISPs have established strategic points of presence (PoP) sites at Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers all over the globe. Equinix boasts the largest number of networks under one roof of any data center provider with over 10 million square feet of data center capacity across 32 strategic markets in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. These connections enable CSPs to perform at the highest possible level.

Underground Hacker Markets Annual Report

Like any other market in a capitalist system, the business of cybercrime is guided by the supply and demand for various goods and services waxes and wanes. Unfortunately for the law abiding public, both sides of that equation remain strong, with everything from credit cards to hacker-for-hire services being sold online. ATM skimming jumped during the year, and the skimmers necessary to perform that kind of scam were of particular interest to many cybercriminals and were seen selling for as much as $1,775. Meanwhile, malware was much cheaper, and continues to offer a low barrier to entry for cybercriminals looking to steal information such as bank account credentials and other data that can be turned into money. This also includes items like airline rewards points that can be exchanged online for gift cards to restaurants, retailers and others. Another hot commodity is information that can be used to commit identity fraud, such as social security cards, utility bills, and driver’s licenses

Threat Intelligence Executive Report

The SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) research team analyzes security threats and helps clients protect their systems. The following events and trends were significant in May 2016

A Framework for Cloud Enablement Whitepaper

The job of delivering IT services has long been a difficult one. The IT department is expected to provide secure, reliable and cost-effective services to users. Those same users, however, want easy access to the applications and information necessary to do their jobs. And they expect applications to perform well whether they’re being accessed on a desktop computer at headquarters, on a tablet device at home, or on a smartphone in a cab halfway around the world. Traditional methods of IT delivery weren’t designed to meet these demands. Many enterprises are looking to cloud computing to enable access anytime, anywhere and on any device. The cloud-enabled enterprise can be more cost-effective, more agile and more capable. But successful migration to the cloud demands a thorough understanding of users and of the performance characteristics of their applications. For businesses with operations or users in multiple locations, it may also require migration to a more distributed application delivery architecture. With a strong network foundation in place, enterprises will be well-positioned to take advantage of cloud-based services to meet their IT challenges, both today and into the future

Why Hybrid Cloud Makes Sense Whitepaper

With the rise of cloud infrastructure, software as a service, the global data footprint, and mobile apps, CIOs and business leaders need to think much more broadly about how their technology fits into a global network of services. Applications must be designed to be split across multiple locations and delivered on a multitude of platforms across the globe.The hybrid cloud provides opportunities for enterprises to save money, accelerate development, maintain security, and connect to as many partners and customers as possible, and in the most optimal way. However, there are important management considerations for the hybrid cloud. Some of which have been obscured. That’s why the focus of the next paper in this series is “Advice for Hybrid Cloud Architects.”

Healthcare: Disaster Recovery Planning Guide

A new era of increased reliance on technology in the healthcare sector is producing an unprecedented amount of data, increasing at a rate of 48% every year. 1 With the promise of dramatic improvement in the quality of patient care, the shift towards electronic health records and digital images are effective approaches towards more efficient, accessible, and compliant services

ESG 2017 Predictions for Cloud, Part 1

In this 3-part ESG Video Series, ESG's Terri McCLure, Dan Conde, and Edwin Yuen talk about their expectations for the Cloud segment in 2017. This is Part 1 of 3.

The Universal Cloud Services Model

Bringing Brookdale Hospital into the Cloud

Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center's CIO discusses how Brookdale's need for a rapid, 10-month application and infrastructure overhaul led to working with Velocity to successfully implement a new clinical EMR solution.

6 Trends That Will Shape Cloud Computing in 2017

Cloud computing has helped many enterprises transform themselves over the last five years, but experts agree that the market is entering something of a second wave, both for public cloud and private cloud services built and hosted in corporate data centers. The cloud market will accelerate faster in 2017 as enterprises seek to gain efficiencies as they scale their compute resources to better serve customers, says Forrester Research in a new report.“The No. 1 trend is here come the enterprises,” says Forrester analyst Dave Bartoletti, primary author of the research. “Enterprises with big budgets, data centers and complex applications are now looking at cloud as a viable place to run core business applications.” Forrester says the first wave of cloud computing was created by Amazon Web Services, which launched with a few simple compute and storage services in 2006. A decade later, AWS is operating at an $11 billion run rate.Forrester found that 38 percent of 1,000-plus North American and European enterprise infrastructure technology decision-makers said that they are building private clouds, with 32 percent procuring public cloud services and the remainder planning to implement some form of cloud technology in the next 12 months. Also, 59 percent of respondents said they were adopting a hybrid cloud model.Forrester offered the following cloud predictions for 2017: Regional players complement ’mega cloud providers’CIOs who initially elected to build private clouds may find themselves switching to public clouds as they realize just how time-consuming and costly the work will prove. Capital One shuttered private cloud efforts in favor of Amazon Web Services a few years ago, says its CIO Rob Alexander. “We recognized that we were spending a lot of time, energy, effort and management bandwidth to create infrastructure that already exists out there in a much better state and is evolving at a furious pace,” Alexander says.[ Related: AWS quietly launches cloud migration tool ]The global public cloud market will top $146 billion in 2017, up from just $87 billion in 2015 and is growing at a 22 percent compound annual growth rate. The lion’s share of this growth will come from Amazon.com, Microsoft, Google and IBM, which have emerged as "mega-cloud providers,” Bartoletti says. They are opening new data centers and making concessions, such as Microsoft’s agreement to have T-Systems manage its cloud in Germany to meet data localization requirements. But the big players won’t be able to service every unique request, which means smaller regional players will see an uptick in adoption in 2017. Bartoletti recommends: "Keep you options open and don't be afraid to use multiple providers."Cloud cost containment One popular theory is that CIOs will save money by investing in public cloud software, but that’s not always the case. The fact that most CIOs leverage multiple cloud providers means enterprises are already waist-deep in complex cloud vendor management. Also, if companies leave public cloud instances running through the weekend when they don’t need them, CIOs can actually spend more money than they did with on-premises solutions. [ Related: Inside a hyperscale data center (how different is it?) ]IT executives will get better at containing cloud costs in 2017 as their best practices mature. And it’s already happening. Bartoletti says that a cloud architect for a large software company shaved $300,000 off of a $2.5 million cloud bill by monitoring his consumption. And cost management tools from the likes of AWS, Cloudability and Cloudyn are available. “There’s no reason in 2017 for your cloud costs to grow out of control,” Bartoletti says.Lift and shift those cloud appsForrester also recommends that companies refactor apps to run on public cloud systems, leveraging migration services, rather than simply dumping existing apps into a public cloud. The optimum option to move an application is to rewrite it to take advantage of cloud’s elasticity, although this lift-and-shift migration can be costly. “In 2017, lift-and-shift migration tools will accelerate the rate of cloud migration, given their low cost for bulk application migrations,” Bartoletti says.Hyperconverge your private cloud Bartoletti says that while more Forrester clients are citing security as a reason to shift to public cloud services not every CIO wants to accept risks associated with entrusting their customer and other sensitive data to a third-party vendor. Like their public cloud counterparts, private cloud services require advanced virtualization, standardization, automation, self-service access and resource monitoring. Stitching these capabilities together into a cohesive system is daunting and expensive.Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions promise to help, offering preintegrated compute and storage resources that help organizations get their cloud implementations running faster. Forrester recommends that organizations consider HCI as the foundation for their private cloud development, particularly for new workloads that demand rapid, automated scale-out. “HCI is quickly becoming the default infrastructure platform upon which to build the private portion of a hybrid cloud,” Bartoletti says.There’s a container for thatContainers enable developers to manage software code, particularly software developed for cloud apps. Forrester says that Linux containers will be available in every major public and private cloud platform by early 2017. Developers will consume them directly and often build their own stacks to power microservices development. But the new paradigm means new challenges; companies will need to grapple with new security, monitoring, storage and networking issues that arise as containers are deployed broadly in production. “Your first step should be to evaluate the pros and cons of on-premises private PaaS versus a managed public cloud development platform; you might need both,” Bartoletti says.Enterprise apps come to public cloudSeveral companies are hosting enterprise applications in AWS, suggesting that CIOs have become more comfortable hosting critical software in the public cloud. Dollar Shave Club runs Spark analytics software in AWS. Cardinal Health runs Splunk in AWS. Several others are running business apps, such as SAP, in AWS. Bartoletti says you can expect this trend to continue as CIOs rely more heavily on public cloud providers. “Enterprise are turning great ideas into software and insights faster and the cloud is the best place to get quick insights out of enterprise data,” Bartoletti says.Related video:

What’s The Difference Between Private Cloud And The Way I’ve Been Building And Providing IT?

First, cloud computing implies a level of self-service for your users and business units. To get to self-service, you need to build in automation, monitoring, and reporting to your infrastructure. But the real key is a change to helping your business‘s people to get their work done and needs met in ways that help them help themselves. When you’re doing that, both you and your business win.

Check out a few of the top CLOUD products and solutions below that can help you with your CLOUD strategy.

The Pinnacle Group&#39;s Cloud Solutions Portfolio

A list of various cloud solutions offered by The Pinnacle Group. CenturyLink, VMware, Netelligent, and other providers and their products included.

Netelligent Cloud Solutions

There are two basic types of technology equipment. The kind that is broken, and the kind that will break. With NetTend, the managed services offering from Netelligent, you no longer have to worry about the next IT breakdown that will bring your productivity to a screeching halt.

VMware vRealize

VMware vRealize Suite is an enterprise-ready, cloud management platform that delivers the industry’s most complete solution for managing a heterogeneous, hybrid cloud.

CenturyLink Cloud Services

Save your business time and money and collaborate with ease. What are cloud and hosting services? It's pretty simple, really. Instead of buying and managing your own hardware, software and servers, you put CenturyLink to work for you. It allows you to cut costs, collaborate easily and simplify your business' IT needs. What can cloud and hosting services do for you? Basically everything.

IBM Security: Cloud

IBM protects cloud environments with cloud security strategies and a comprehensive portfolio of solutions. These security solutions span the entire cloud lifecycle and all security domains, including identity and access management, application and data security, infrastructure protection and security intelligence for the cloud.

How Can I Get Started With Cloud?

Call or email your Pinnacle representative. We’ll meet with you to get familiar with your business and your challenges, then produce a plan with you to move you from today’s IT to an environment that you can manage more easily, and free up more of your IT department’s time for creating new business value.